The Abdication Scene. The Essex Richard the Second,' appeared in 1634. The First Quarto, so far as it extends, gives the most authoritative text. But in the "new additions of the Parliament Sceane" it would appear that the defective text of the [Fourth] Quarto had been corrected from the author's MS. For this part, therefore, the First Folio is our highest authority.'1 The 'new additions' (iv. 1. 159-318) first introduced in the 1608 Quarto are indistinguishable in style from the rest of the play, and undoubtedly belonged to the original text. Their omission during Elizabeth's lifetime is explained by the sinister significance which the story of Richard had acquired in the political intrigues of her later years as a means of veiled allusion to herself. It was dangerous to relate, even with the best intentions, Richard's deposition in print; and Sir John Hayward, who narrated it in his History of the Life and Raigne of Henry IV., in 1599, was censured by the Star Chamber and sent to prison. That such severity was not altogether groundless became clear in 1601 when Sir Gilly Merrick, with a company of Essex's con federates, procured the performance of 'the play of the deposing and killing of King Richard the Second,' on the afternoon before the revolt. 'Know ye not that I am Richard the Second?' said Elizabeth to Lambarde, the Keeper of the Records in the Tower, on his showing her the Rolls of the reign; adding, as an illustration of Essex's ingratitude to his benefactor, that the tragedy in question 'had been played 40tie times in open streets and houses.' 2 We have no definite evidence that this muchdebated tragedy was Shakespeare's Richard II. But the sceptical view has been somewhat over-urged. 1 Cambridge edition, iv. 9. 2 Nichol's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth. In its favour is Camden's description of the piece as 'an obsolete tragedy'-exoletam tragediam de tragica abdicatione regis Ric. II.,-as well as the objection raised by the players, when applied to by Merrick, that it was so old and so long out of use that they should have small or no company at yt"; 1 an objection only overcome by the offer of 'forty shillings beyond their ordinary.' This is scarcely language which we expect to hear applied to a Shakespearean drama, especially one which repaid the issue of five quarto editions. But can we accept the players' excuse as their real motive? A play so dangerously suggestive as to be mutilated before publication was not likely to lack an audience when played, as it must have been, entire; and we know that the tragedy in question was in request 'in open streets and houses.' If the players hung back, we may surmise that it was rather from fear of official resentment than of deficient receipts, whatever subterfuge they chose to put forward in reply to Merrick. Moreover, not only is no other play on the subject known, but the language used of it appears to imply that no other existed, that they had no choice. Phillipps, a member of Shakespeare's company, and Lord Bacon, both speak of it as the play of the deposing,' etc. Two other Elizabethan Richard II.'s are known: (i) the play witnessed by Dr. Simon Forman, at the Globe, on April 30, 1611; (ii) 'The Tragedy of Richard II.,' still extant in a so-called Egerton MS.2 Both, however, deal with the earlier events of 1 Examination of Augustine Phillipps servant of the L. Chamberlain in the State Paper Office. The incident is told in substantially similar terms by Bacon in his Declaration of the practices and treasons attempted and committed by Robert Earl of Essex,' and in the State Trials. 2 Printed privately by Halliwell. Cf. Marshall's paper in Transactions of New Shakesp. Society, April 10, 1885. Date of tion. the reign, the revolt of Jack Straw, and the royal conspiracy which led to the murder of Gloucester. Forman's play may perhaps have included Richard's deposition as one of its crowded incidents, but certainly not as its main subject. Is it likely that, in 1601, a member of Shakespeare's company, which had had his Richard in their possession for half a dozen years, should speak of any older piece as 'the play of the deposing' of Richard? It is also to be borne in mind that Shakespeare, by his obligations to Southampton, was connected with the Essex party. On the whole, we may safely conclude that it was Shakespeare's Richard II. with which we have here to do. Beyond the fact of its publication in 1597, our evidence for the date of Richard II. is wholly internal. Daniel's Civil Wars (1595) has been thought to show traces of its influence,1 and certainly agrees with the play in two or three points in which both diverge from history; e.g. Richard's meeting with the queen after his return, and his public abdication. But his way of handling these scenes does not suggest imitation, and it remains doubtful whether he had seen the play.2 The internal evidences of date, on the other hand, are unusually pronounced, and mark it off decisively from both the earlier and the later groups of Histories. In subject it is almost a Prelude to Henry IV., but two years at least are measured, in Shakespearean chronology, by the transition from the somewhat constrained and ceremonial style of Richard, with its lyric tone, rhetorical phrasing,3 1 Grant White. 2 Richard abdicates in a long prosaic speech of self-defence and exhortation; his meeting with the queen takes place in the Tower, before his abdication. 3 Note e.g. the recurring images founded on sharp contrasts of light or colour,—a favourite effect in Elizabethan lyric poetry; thus Aumerle is the muddy passage' in which York's silver fountain' has been defiled (v. 3. 61). and persistent1 word-play, to the large movement, the freedom, variety, and naturalness, and dramatic vivacity of style in Henry IV. A similar hiatus seems discernible in the characters. The brief glimpse of the 'dissolute and desperate' prince (v. 2.) suggests a coarser and cruder conception of him than that finally worked out; and Henry's vivid picture (1 Hen. IV. iii. 2. 60) of the skipping king,' who 'ambled up and down with shallow jesters and rash bavin wits,' opens up visions of a Falstaffian world which the author of Richard II. did not yet venture to read between the lines of his chronicle. Differences little less striking separate Richard II. from Richard III. The extraordinary wealth of rhyme in Richard II. is not in itself a trustworthy mark of date; but it proves that Shakespeare was breaking away from the spell of Marlowe, so dominant through the all but rhymeless Richard III. A tragedy upon Richard II. inevitably challenged comparison with Marlowe's Edward II.; but Shakespeare deals with his kindred Marlowe's theme like a rival who had recently escaped from the glamour of discipleship. Reminiscences abound, but in point of dramatic art the two works stand at opposite poles. Marlowe reproduces the whole tangled story of the reign; Shakespeare detaches the final catastrophe, and treats it with an almost classical severity and reserve. Marlowe accumulates harrowing and squalid details. Shakespeare subordinates all that is thrilling, violent, and sensational in tragedy to the 1 Here and there the pursuit of verbal antithesis leads to glaringly unnatural touches, ---as in York's almost grotesque repudiation of Bolingbroke's proffered mercy to his son (v. 3.). Thou kill'st me in his life; giving him breath, The traitor lives, the true man's put a 2 e.g. the obvious imitation of Faustus' outburst (of Helen) 'Was this the face that launch'd thousand ships, etc., and Richard's self-pity in iv. i. 281 f., 'Was this the face,' etc. Edward II profounder tragic pathos of character. Richard II. Romeo and seems to be closely akin in several points to Romeo and Juliet. Juliet. In both we find the high-wrought lyric style, ready at any moment of quickened impulse to break into rhyme and strophe; in both, the disposition to paint character by detailed and eloquent rendering of emotional states, rather than by the brief revealing vision of the later tragedies. In the fate of Richard, too, there is a suggestion of the antithesis between poetry and prose, romance and politics, on which the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is built.1 Only one other History resembles Romeo and Juliet in this respect, that in which the passion of Constance for Arthur is crushed out among the intrigues of state and war; and King John, as will be seen, must in any case be placed near Richard II. All these considerations tend to assign Richard II. to the years 1593-5, most probably to 1594,-the epoch of Shakespeare's most elaborate efforts in lyric romance, -the Venus and the Lucrece. The Shaping Sources. The play follows, with remarkable fidelity, the of the Plot Chronicle of Holinshed, as given in the enlarged second edition.2 What is invented is often highly romantic in quality (e.g. the pathetic parting of Richard and his queen), but far less daringly un 1 York, with his feeble, ineffective wrath and scraps of colloquial bluster (Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle'), as also in his extravagant animosity towards his own kin, curiously resembles old Capulet. 2 A few details seem to be derived from Holinshed's chief authority, Halle. Some unknown source perhaps supplied Shakespeare with the information that Carlisle was committed to the custody of the Abbot of Westminster, as we know to have been the case, not as Holinshed says to that of the Abbot of St. Alban's. But it is more likely that Shakespeare, having to deal later with a conspiracy in the house of the Abbot of Westminster in which both this abbot and Carlisle took part, deliberately economised with his abbots by assigning the rôle of both to Westminster. |